A portrait of Vice President Kamala Harris was erected on the National Mall this week. The portrait is made out of shattered glass meant to honor Harris’ glass-ceiling-breaking career.
Several groups wanted to mark Harris’ historic achievement of being the first Black and Asian American woman to be Vice President of the United States. They unveiled the six foot tall and six foot wide portrait in front of the Lincoln Memorial on Thursday (February 5).
“This will just be a wonderful visual emblem of this moment in time and hopefully people will reflect a little on all the barriers that have been broken by her election,” Holly Hotchner, president and CEO of the National Women’s History Museum told The Associated Press.
Before becoming VP, Harris broke several other barriers, serving as the first woman and person of color district attorney in San Francisco. She was also the first Black person to serve as attorney general of California and later became the first Black Senator from the state.
The creative agency BBH New York hired Swedish artist Simon Berger to design the portrait.
To create the portrait, Berger told the AP he “hit the glass directly with the hammer, so that cracks and impacts occur. Hard hits create abstraction and I ‘paint’ with targeted fine hits.”
The portrait will be at the Lincoln Memorial until Saturday evening (February 13), but will return to New York.
VP Harris was reportedly spotted near the Lincoln Memorial on Friday (February 6) by a jogger, but it’s unclear if she went to visit the portrait.
Photo: Getty Images